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Books > Arts & Architecture > Antiques & collectables > Ceramics & glass
Born into a traditional culture in 1833, Emanuel Suter cultivated
the art of pottery and expanded markets across the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia, creating a thriving company and leaving
thousands of examples of utilitarian ceramic ware that have
survived down to the present. Drawing on Suter's diary-rich with
meticulous descriptions of his ceramic wares, along with glazing
recipes and the quotidian details of nineteenth-century business-as
well as myriad other primary and secondary sources, Suter's
great-great-grandson Scott Hamilton Suter tells the story of how a
farmer with a seasonal sideline developed into a technologically
advanced entrepreneur who operated a modern industrial company. As
a farmer, Emanuel Suter innovated by adopting new time-saving
equipment; this progressive thinking bled over into his religious
life, as he endeavored to change the traditional way of choosing
ministers by lot and advocated for the formation of Sunday schools
in the Mennonite Church. But Suter largely made his mark as a
potter, and A Potter's Progress is enhanced by nearly two dozen
color images and a close study of the techniques (including kilns
and jigger wheels), products, shop organization, marketing, and
labor of Suter's shops, revealing the revolutionary role they
played in the world of Rockingham County, Virginia, pottery
manufacture. This tightly focused case study of the trials and
triumphs of one craftsman as he moved from a cottage industry to a
full-scale industrial enterprise-prefiguring the market economy
that would characterize the twentieth century-serves as a microcosm
for examining the American spirit of progress in late
nineteenth-century America.
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